If children are not introduced to music at an early age, I believe something fundamental is actually being taken from them.

People think I'm disciplined. It is not discipline. It is devotion. There is a great difference.

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.

I think a life in music is a life beautifully spent, and this is what I have devoted my life to.

The rivalry is with ourself. I try to be better than is possible. I fight against myself, not against the other.

Music making is the most joyful activity possible, the most perfect expression of any emotion.

Some singers want the audience to love them. I love the audience.

Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

As an art form, opera is a rare and remarkable creation. For me, it expresses aspects of the human drama that cannot be expressed in any other way, or certainly not as beautifully.

Am I afraid of high notes? Of course I am afraid. What sane man is not?

These violent delights have violent ends.

Society can only hurt if you care for its opinion

I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country

This is a chance for me to listen and learn. There's no more important and rewarding part of my job.

I fell in love with magic acts and bridged into that.

Just because someone does not love you as you want, it does not mean that you do not love with all his being.

Florentina Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty-three years, seven months and eleven days and nights. 'Forever,' he said.

First fight. Then fiddle.

Neither fear your death's day nor long for it.

Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.